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Friday, January 31, 2014

In 1999, Leanne Hecht from Roswell, Georgia graduated from the University of Georgia. With her degree in marketing, she moved to Denver, Colorado after being offered a job there. In 2008, Leanne began dating Josh Bearden, a Denver resident from Garden Ridge, Texas. Bearden had graduated from Texas A & M and possessed a degree in marketing as well. The couple were married in 2009.

Leanne and Josh, in March 2012, left their home in Denver to embark on a trip around the world. Twenty-two months later, after visiting 56 countries and blogging about their adventures, they returned to the United States.

In December 2013, following a short stay with Leanne's family in Roswell, Georgia, the pair traveled to Garden Ridge, Texas to visit his folks. They had scheduled a flight back to Denver for January 21, 2014.

Early Friday afternoon, on January 17, 2014, Leanne left the Garden Ridge house to hike in the rugged west Texas terrain northeast of San Antonio. The five-foot, 100 pound woman with two piercings on her left ear, wore hiking shoes and a pair of jeans. She did not take her cellphone, but was in possession of $60 and a couple of credit cards.

At 5:30 PM that Friday, when Leanne didn't return home from her outing, Josh reported his wife missing. At eight the next morning, officers withe the Garden Ridge Police Department and the Comal County Sheriff's Office, accompanied by 150 volunteer civilians, a contingent of Texas National Guard members, Texas Rangers and a search and rescue team, launched a massive search for the missing 33-year-old. A pair of helicopters, for three hours, flew over a 23-mile-square patch of landscape that features boulders, cliffs, and caves. The search produced no clues as to what happened to Leanne Bearden.

Leanne had been missing a week when a group in Denver held a fundraiser to solicit money to hire a private missing persons investigator named Charles Parker.

Assuming Leanne wasn't abducted or murdered, she either ran off, got lost, or suffered an injury. She could have twisted an ankle or fallen off a cliff. It seems rather odd, however, that given the hostile terrain, and the possibility of getting injured or lost, she did not leave the house with her cellphone.

On January 29, 2014, a member of the missing woman's family posted the following message on Facebook: "The pressure of transitioning from her two-year trip back into what we consider "normal" life seems to have left Leanne very anxious and stressed. As a result there is evidence that Leanne may have voluntarily left the area….We initially believed that she was somewhere in the local area. However, after much searching…no evidence has been found of her presence. If Leanne has indeed fled this area, she is extremely vulnerable. She left with only a few assets and is traveling very light. Although she is athletic, she is small in stature. Her mental and physical status is uncertain. We fear for her greatly."

On Thursday, February 13, 2014, a Garden Ridge police spokesperson announced that Leanne Bearden's body was found in a wooded area not far from her in-law's house. Jewelry and identification cards were with the body. An autopsy will determine her cause and manner of death.

According to media reports, Bearden's body was discovered hanging from a tree. The area where she was found had been searched several times by members of her family. As a result, it was not included in the search conducted by law enforcement agencies, volunteers, and search and rescue crews.

On Friday, February 14, 2014, Garden Ridge Police Chief Donna O'Conner announced that the autopsy results reveal that Leanne Bearden committed suicide. The case is closed.

On January 12, 2014, Alliance Ohio police arrested a Cuyahoga Falls man after he tried to purchase a 10-year-old girl for sex from an undercover police officer. Robert W. Thomas Jr., 36, was arrested…following a weeklong investigation….Thomas requested a child in the 5-to 8-year range, offering to pay $400 in cash for her. The man told the undercover officer that he wished to keep the child permanently at his home to engage in sexual conduct and, police say, to "train her to please him."…

Alliance detectives also executed a search warrant at Thomas' home. They found a computer, electronic storage devices, sexual paraphernalia, videos and several firearms….He has been charged with trafficking in persons, attempted kidnapping, attempted rape and possessing criminal tools. He is being held in the Stark County Jail on $2 million bond.

The University of Missouri is launching an independent investigation into allegations that several football players raped a MU swimmer. That swimmer, 20-year-old Sasha Menue Courey, killed herself three years ago, but a recent report airing on ESPN initiated new calls for an investigation. MU officials are upset with ESPN's report which suggests the University should have done more to investigate these allegations of rape….

Courey went to the MU psychiatric ward in the spring of 2011 and was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, She told the counselor a football player raped her in February of 2010. And a football friend of hers says he saw video of at least three football players assaulting her….

Sasha's parents told ESPN they didn't trust MU officials since the university was slow to react to their request for information after their daughter's death.

In a gross and shocking miscarriage of justice, a Nebraska county judge handed down a harsh 45-day sentence to Catholic school-girl-turned-porn-actress Valerie Dodd, the Rosa Parks of the publicly nude. One evening some months ago, 19-year-old Dodd took her one-woman act to Lincoln Pius X High School in Lincoln, Nebraska. A former student of the Catholic school, Dodd--who now goes by the stage name "Val Midwest'--wanted revenge on teachers and ex-classmates who had said mean things about her new career, so she took pictures of herself in the buff on school grounds….

Police ticketed her for trespassing and public nudity. Undeterred, this modern-day civil rights hero returned to the school wearing only pasties and panties--an act of sexy civil disobedience, if ever there was one.

The court did not take kindly to Dodd's subversive art and activism….

Robby Soave, "Teen Porn Star Who Got Nude on Catholic School Grounds Gets 45 Days in Jail," The Daily Caller, December 27, 2013

Disgraced ex-journalist Stephen Glass' dream of becoming a California lawyer has been shattered, at least for the foreseeable future. The California Supreme Court on January 27, 2014 rejected Glass' bid to secure a state bar license, concluding that he had not overcome the stain of his tarnished and infamous past as a journalist who fabricated stories for prominent publications in the late 1990s.

Glass has been pursuing a law license for years, arguing that he deserves a second chance in a new profession after his much-pulicized fall for concocting bogus accounts for magazines such as the New Republic and Rolling Stone. Glass' journalistic exploits led to a book and a movie, "Shattered Glass."…

Thursday, January 30, 2014

It started when police found $7.2 million stuffed in eight suitcases at a Panama airport. Investigators say they suspect the cash, which had been concealed in hidden compartments in luggage on a flight from Honduras, was being moved for a powerful cartel, but they haven't said which one. The money was mostly in U.S. $100 bills….

In a case that highlights the regional impacts of the drug trade, now Honduran investigators are trying to figure out how the suitcases slipped by airport authorities, drug police and special investigators at the Toncontin airport in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. [Let me guess: police payoffs.]

The goal of any interrogation, by definition, is to elicit a confession from a guilty party, not to investigate the truth of a denial. The common tactics used to gain confessions are based on the idea that only guilty people are interrogated in the first place. In theory, when a suspect is brought in for questioning, detectives begin with an "interview," in which information is gathered and the police make an assessment as to the guilt or innocence of the party. In this step, a non-accusatory question-and-answer period is meant to allow the detective an opportunity to gather more information and to make observations about the suspect that might indicate that he is lying. Once they decide that they are speaking with a guilty party, the interrogation begins. Detectives often believe that they are experts at separating truth from lies, but studies have shown that this is a false confidence.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

The average cost of tuition, room and board at private four-year colleges and universities has increased 27.89 percent--from $31,993 during the 2008-2009 academic year to $40,917 this year [2014]. At public four-year colleges and universities, the average cost has risen 27.96 percent--from $14, 372 in 2008-2009 to $18,391 this year.

According to the inflation calculator provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the $31,993 total price tag for a private school in 2008 would be equal to just $34,616 at the end of 2013 if college costs rose at the rate of inflation--a far cry from the $40,917 an average student is paying this year. Similarly, the $14,372 total price tag for a public school in 2008 would be equal to just $15,550 at the end of 2013--substantially less than the $18,391 an average student at a taxpayer-funded public school is paying this year.

….The Boulder police union's contract requires that police officers regularly and frequently rotate through the various units--traffic, patrol, and investigations--rather than developing extensive experience in a particular area. Thus, Boulder police rotate in and out of detective duty, which is highly desirable for the officers because they don't have to work weekends or wear uniforms, but also means that relatively untrained detectives have to handle criminal cases. This is a major difference from employment contracts in other Colorado cities.

Imagine how we [John and Patsy Ramsey] felt when we learned than an officer who had only been a detective for several months was one of the major police investigators on the case.

Our friends began telling us that the Boulder police detectives were contacting them and saying things like, "The Ramseys think you may have something to do with the death of their daugher. Would you like to tell us anything about the Ramseys?" A standard interrogation technique. Bias the witness against a suspect and let them spill their guts out. We also heard the police made comments like, "The Ramseys refuse to talk with us. Will you help us?"

In the state of Indiana, a person convicted of armed robbery will serve about six years in prison; someone convicted of rape will serve about eight; and a convicted murderer can expect to spend twenty-five years behind bars. These figures are actually higher than the nation average: eleven years and four months in prison is the typical punishment for an American found guilty of murder….

[In 1990, 38-year-old Mark Young] was arrested at his Indianapolis home for brokering the sale of seven hundred pounds of marijuana grown on a farm in nearby Morgan County. Young was tried and convicted under federal law. He had never before been charged with drug trafficking. He had no history of violent crime. Young's sole role in the illegal transaction had been that of a middleman--he never distributed the drugs; he simply introduced two people hoping to sell a large amount of marijuana to three people wishing to buy it. The offense occurred a year and a half before his arrest. No confiscated marijuana, money, or physical evidence of any kind linked Young to the crime. He was convicted solely on the testimony of co-conspirators who were now cooperating with the government. On February 8, 1992, Mark Young was sentenced by federal judge Sarah Evans Barker to life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

A compassionate Houston driver who gave some change to a homeless man was later wrongfully arrested on police suspicion that his charity was part of a drug deal. During a late-night drive, Greg Snider pulled into an empty parking lot to make a call on his cell phone. A homeless man approached him and asked for money. Snider gave him 75 cents in change before continuing his drive….

A police car pulled Snider over. The officer ordered him out of his car, handcuffed him and put him in the back of the police car….The officer told Snider that he had seen him make a drug deal. Eventually, as many as 10 police cars approached the scene….Snider agreed to let the officer search his car…After an hour-long search, officers were forced to admit that the man had no drugs, and let him go. The police laughed all the while--apparently, they found it hilarious that they had detained an innocent man for over an hour over a misunderstanding. [Had the driver made a "furtive move," he may have been shot.]

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Killing to ease the stress of a bad day was part of the strategy adopted by care assistants Catherine Wood and Gwendoline Graham at the Alpine Manor Nursing Home in Walter, Michigan. To make their game more fun, they selected their elderly victims in a sequence whereby the first letter of their names spelled out the word, M.U.R.D.E.R….

Wood and Graham were lesbian lovers and while they both received satisfactory job reviews, their nursing home colleagues had suspicions about their behavior. For one thing, the pair liked to boast about the callous way they treated some of their patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease which included taking souvenirs such as trinkets and ornaments. Colleagues were not sure how seriously to take things they were told.

After a series of eight deaths at the nursing home, some of these boasts landed on fertile ground. Wood's ex-huband heard stories about patients being suffocated and, after months of indecision, eventually went to the police. The two women were arrested in December 1988 and charged with murder….

Wood was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to twenty to forty years imprisonment while Graham, found guilty of six murders, was sentenced to life with no hope of parole.

New data suggests that inmates have just as much to fear from their guards as they do from each other: Nearly half of all sexual assaults in U.S. jails and prisons are committed by corrections officers and staff. That statistic actually represents an uptick in reported cases of sexual assault. Accusations of rape against prison guards and staff rose 18 percent between 2006 and 2011--the most recent year for which data is available--according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics….

According to the statistics, in cases where the accusation was found credible, 77.1 percent of the victims--and 80 percent of the perpetrators--were male. More than a third of the victims were 24-years-old or younger….

Some experts think rape between guards and prisoners is actually occurring at an even higher frequency than the number of accusations suggest….

Robby Soave, "The Horrible Truth: Half of All Prison Rape is Committed by Guards," The Daily Caller, January 24, 2014

Monday, January 27, 2014

Big public events that attract tens of thousands of people also draw criminals such as thieves, drug dealers, and prostitutes. Many of the hookers are teenage women, runaways forced into the sex trade. For police administrators big events are law enforcement and security headaches. If crime is prevented, no big deal. If something goes wrong, there's hell to pay. For law enforcement, events like the Super Bowl are no-win propositions.

The Super Bowl presents an enormous challenge to law enforcement practitioners. While the first concern is terrorism, there is also the problem of crime. On February 2, 2014, the annual Super Bowl extravaganza will be held at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, the home of the NFL's New Jersey Giants. The proximity of this venue to New York City will make it an attractive base of operation for a small army of flesh traffickers.

Danielle Douglas, an anti-prostitution activist has said that the "Super Bowl is a huge arena for sex trafficking--men are coming to the event to have sex with women, men and/or children." For the past several years in New Jersey, police agencies have been waging a losing battle against pimps who keep young prostitutes on drugs and in conditions of involuntary servitude.

Early in 2013, the New Jersey legislature strengthened the state's human trafficking law. But in August of that year, a federal judge struck down the portion of the legislation that applied to criminalizing the placing of commercial sex ads online. According to the judge, that section of New Jersey's law conflicted with federal sex trafficking legislation. New Jersey's attorney general has appealed the federal ruling.

In anticipation of this year's big game, New Jersey Attorney General John Hoffman created a Super Bowl task force to deal with the expected wave of pimps and their sex slaves. Police officers assigned to Super Bowl detail are being trained to look for young women who seem frightened, or bear signs of physical abuse. Also receiving this training are hospitality workers and airport employees.

The state is publishing public information ads profiling exploited sex trade victims, and law enforcement hotlines have been put into operation. It's doubtful, however, than these measures will make much of a dent in the annual Super Bowl sex business.

Police in northern California have arrested an elementary school teacher after she allegedly brought marijuana-laced food to an after-hours employee pot-luck dinner. Teresa Gilmete Badger, a 47-year-old teacher at Matthew Turner Elementary School in Benicia, was arrested on January 24, 2014 on suspicion of poisoning after a six-week-long investigation….

After the late-November 2013 get-together in the bay area town, several people reported feeling ill…At least one of the women tested positive for THC, the principal intoxicant in marijuana….A 15-year-old got sick after someone at the party brought leftovers home….

Dozens of inmates in Arizona jails run by a sheriff who has been a controversial figure in the national immigration debate have been put on a diet of bread and water for desecrating U.S. flags that hang in each cell….Maricopa County lawman Joe Arpaio, who has been called "America's toughest sheriff," said 38 inmates were currently getting these meals twice a day as punishment for destroying government property while in custody at six jails.

"These inmates have destroyed the American flag that was placed in their cells. Tearing them, writing on them, stepping on them, throwing them in the toilet, trash or wherever they feel," Arpaio said in a statement. "It's a disgrace to those who have fought for our country." The punishment will last for seven days, he said, and a second offense could bring 10 more days of the sparse diet.

A sheriff's spokesman said the bread provides the daily requirement of calories and nutrients that is necessary….

David Schwartz, "Arizona Sheriff Puts Inmates on Bread and Water for Desecrating U.S. Flag," Reuters, January 24, 2014

The police department in Berthoud, Colorado is so dysfunctional and mismanaged that town leaders are considering disbanding it, according to an in-depth article in the Fort Collins Colaradoan….The paper reported terrible morale, poorly secured assault rifles that aren't necessary for routine police work, and broken or poorly maintained equipment at the eight-officer department. [Larimer County Sheriff Justin Smith] submitted a confidential report to the Berthoud town board detailing the department's myriad problems…"It has been reported that Chief Glenn Johnson was most often found in his office focused on computer work, or was absent much of the time he was scheduled to be at work," Sheriff Smith reported.

"As a matter of fact," Smith wrote, the evidence suggests a serious lack of control existed. The examples of outdated reference materials, clutter, disorganization, and the poor state of the evidence room and failed evidence procedures indicate that the chief did no walking around his department facility, or if he did, he ignored obvious inefficiency and problems."

The Sheriff's office also found Chief Johnson hired officers who were unqualified and who displayed "warning signs of inappropriate and sometimes illegal behavior." He also found squad cars with bald tires, oil leaks and broken laptops. And he found that Johnson purchased several fully automatic "machine guns" from the military that are typically only used by SWAT units. Berthoud, with a population of about 5,000, does not have a SWAT unit….[Thank heavens.]

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Jorge Rodriguez, 24, and his girlfriend Melissa Pereira, one year older, had been in a relationship for more than two years. She worked as a production assistant with Fox News in New York City and was also the assistant director of the Boys and Girls Club of Paterson (New Jersey). Melissa resided with her mother at the Wayne Village apartment complex in Wayne, New Jersey. Jorge, the manager of a photography studio, lived in Garfield, New Jersey.

On Friday night, December 27, 2013, the couple told Melissa's mother they were taking a short drive in Jorge's white Honda Prelude. She left the apartment with her cellphone but left behind her jacket and wallet. People saw the couple that night buying candles at a local K-Mart store.

The next morning, Melissa was not back in her apartment and Jorge did not show up for work at the photography studio. On Monday, December 30, family members reported Jorge and Melissa missing. The couple had made New Year's Eve reservations at the Cherry Valley Manor in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. They did not show up at the bed and breakfast, and had not called for a refund of their reservation deposit.

At 10:30 on the morning of January 19, 2014, after a wireless company determined the location of Melissa Pereira's cellphone, police officers entered the Pereira rented garage behind the Wayne Village apartment complex. Inside the garage officers found the white Honda with the frozen couple inside the car. They had been dead for some time.

According to a police spokesperson, the bodies did not show outward signs of trauma. The Honda's fuel tank was bone-dry, and the car battery was dead.

While detectives would have to wait for the autopsy results to know the estimated times of death, a resident of the apartment complex provided information that suggested that the couple had died the night they left the Wayne Village apartment in Rodriguez's car.

The apartment resident told investigators she had seen a young couple in a white Honda pull up to the garage at eleven o'clock on the night of December 27. The man got out of the car, unlocked the door, and backed the vehicle into the garage. The witness said the young man and his companion were smiling and appeared to be happy.

"If you want to be a writer, somewhere along the line you're going to have to hurt somebody. And when that time comes, you go ahead and do it," Charles McGrath said when he was an editor at The New Yorker. "If you can't or don't want to tell that truth, you may as well stop now and save yourself a lot of hardship and pain."…

A novelist wrote a withering account of her recent marriage. Soon after the book came out, the author's ex-husband killed himself. Was she correct to write that novel?

Courts have long upheld the rights of interrogators to lie to suspects, with a single exception, which stems from an 1997 Supreme Court decision. In that case, Bram v. United States, the court held that a confession was not admissible if it came from threats or "direct or implied promises," such as an assurance that a suspect would be treated more leniently if he confessed, or more harshly if he did not. Despite the restriction on both "direct" and "implied" promises, in the years since 1997, courts have tended only to reject confessions when there was evidence of an explicit threat or promise.

Since then, the practices of interrogators have grown more nuanced, to include threats and promises that are merely and subtly implied, and therefore more often accepted in courtrooms as legitimate. Even when an explicit threat or promise is made, it can be difficult for an interrogation suspect to prove that coercive techniques were used, as most interrogations are not recorded in their entirely, and a detective's word can carry more weight with a jury than that of the accused.

Saturday, January 25, 2014

I'm so revolted by writers taking themselves seriously that, as a kind of protest, I've de-prioritized the role of writing in my life. I do it when I've not got anything better to do--and even then I often do nothing instead. [I just watched a documentary on J. D. Salinger's life. Now there's a guy who took himself and his writing seriously.]

Rape is dealt with differently under the Scottish legal system from the way it is treated in England, particularly in how the crime is reported in the media. Up here, we are extremely careful about preserving the anonymity of the victim--another example of the superiority of Scots Law over the English version.

Anonymity is vital--rape often results in victims of the crime being mentally scarred for life and the last thing they need is the added distress of having their names appear in the media. Even the successful conviction of an offender can be of little consolation to a woman violated in this manner, something that the psychologists have been examining for years. In some respects, being a rape victim is like no other type of victim: the ramifications run deep into the subconscious for years, perhaps for a lifetime. It can not be shrugged off in the way some other crimes are ultimately forgotten, buried under the pressure of getting on with life. For the victim and the family concerned, the anguish is horrific.

Death cases aren't always what they appear to be. A recent American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology article analyzed a decade's worth of death investigations in Fulton County [Atlanta], Georgia. The researchers found that death investigators and forensic pathologists disagreed on the manner of death in 12 percent of those cases. Twenty times, death investigators overlooked evidence such as strangulation marks, bullet wounds, and knife wounds and recorded those cases as natural or accidental deaths, only to have the pathologists conduct autopsies and discover that they were homicides. In one case, a driver inadvertently struck a pedestrian. The collision was tying up traffic and it was raining, so the investigator did a perfunctory examination before removing the body and classifying it as an accident. Pathologists later identified multiple gunshot wounds to the victim's head. By then, valuable time and evidence were lost.

Alternately, in twenty-one cases, death investigators reported homicides that proved to be accidents, suicides, or natural deaths.

Friday, January 24, 2014

On the afternoon of January 18, 2014, 16-year-old Jessica Burlew, a runaway from a juvenile group home in Phoenix, was in her mother's Glendale, Arizona apartment. With her mother's knowledge, the teen was having sex with her 43-year-old boyfriend. The girl's mother, Tracey Woodside, left the apartment to take out the trash. While outside the dwelling handling the garbage, Woodside received a call on her cellphone from Jessica who said that her lover, Jason Earl Ash, was dead.

When Woodside returned to the apartment, she found Ash lying in bed with an electrical cord twisted around his neck. He also had superficial cuts on his face, arms, and torso. When Tracey Woodside called 911, Jessica ran out of the apartment.

At the death scene, the girl's mother told police officers that Ash and her daughter regularly played sex games involving ligature strangulation and cutting. Just before passing out Ash was supposed to utter a "safety word" to signal a discontinuation of the choking. This time he died before issuing the warning. (He's not the first person to die of sexual asphyxia, it's a dangerous game.)

Police officers found Jessica at a neighbor's apartment wearing a burka as a disguise. When questioned by officers she admitted accidentally strangling her 43-year-old sex partner with the electrical cord. At first she thought he had merely passed out. To revive Ash, she cut him with a razor blade. After realizing that he was dead, she continued to cut on his body to relieve her own stress.

A spokesperson with the Glendale Police Department, on January 22, 2014, announced that Jessica Burlew has been charged, as an adult, with second-degree murder.

Mundelein, Illinois

At 8:30 on the morning of Tuesday, January 21, 2014, a 14-year-old girl who resided with her mother and her 11-year-old sister in Mundelein, Illinois, a suburban community 30 miles northwest of Chicago, called 911. According to the caller, an intruder had entered the home that morning shortly after her mother left for work. The man had stabbed her younger sister several times then ran out of the house.

Police officers found the 11-year-old victim, Dora Betancourt, unconscious and bleeding on the second floor of the dwelling. Emergency personnel rushed the girl to a nearby hospital where she died shortly after arrival. She had been stabbed 40 times. Based on the cuts on her hands and arms, investigators believe the victim tried to defend herself. At the scene, officers recovered a bloody 4-inch kitchen knife.

Questioned at the Mundelein Police Department, the 14-year-old sister described the intruder as a Hispanic man. When a detective pointed out that the victim had, clutched in her hands, follicles of her older sister's hair, the suspect confessed to the stabbings. After the attack she took a shower to wash off her sister's blood then called her mother who told her to dial 911.

When asked why she attacked her sister with the kitchen knife, the 14-year-old said she had cooked six dinners for her younger sister the previous week and the girl showed no gratitude. Also, the victim had recently hit her. (Obviously there is more behind this vicious, pathological knifing than that.)

Dora Betancourt had been a student at the St. John's Lutheran School in Libertyville. The 14-year-old murder suspect also attended St. John's.

A Lake County prosecutor has charged the 14-year-old girl with first-degree murder. She is being held at a juvenile detention center.

Two states--Colorado and Washington--have completely legalized pot for recreational use….It is estimated that $7.6 billion is spent annually by state and local justice systems on marijuana arrests….Advocates of reforms say instead of spending this money on enforcement, the government could spend it elsewhere and tax marijuana to reap even more for its coffers. Indeed, taxing pot could raise hundreds of millions of dollars, but there is no guarantee that it would be a moneymaker for states.

The financial gains in Washington and Colorado, the two states that have legalized marijuana, have not been as great as some expected. Washington had projected up to $450 million in added annual tax revenue, but the state's new pot consultant figures it could be little more than half that. In Colorado, the Colorado Futures Center think tank forecasts $130 million in new tax revenue but thinks that won't even cover the cost of regulating the new industry.

Actress Rose McGowan said on Twitter that she witnessed a knockout game attack [in Los Angeles] on a 65-year-old man. McGowan, who is most famous for her roles in "Scream" and for dating goth rocker Marilyn Manson, sent several tweets detailing the incident. McGowan said that a young man on a skateboard struck the man who was accompanied by his dog. The man was bleeding after the attack, she claimed.

When a detective looks back on a life of crime fighting, it is natural that the hard cases, the big mysteries, the complex investigations, are those that are remembered best….Crime is seldom simple and the harder the case, the more impact it makes on your life.

Thursday, January 23, 2014

A shocking incest "cult" has been discovered nestled in the hills near Sydney, Australia, and the sickening details have disturbed the entire country. At least 40 adults and children were discovered living in squalid conditions and suffering from a wide array of health issues and deformities as a result of massive inbreeding. The "family," all of the descendants of a brother and sister who had 13 children four generations ago, were discovered after people in a nearby town called authorities to say that children in the hills were not going to school. Authorities describe the shanty incest town as one of the worst cases of incest ever made public.

Kiri Blakeley, "40 Adults and Children Discovered Living in Squalid 'Incest Town' ," Articles in the News, December 11, 2013

Because primitive execution by the sword depended so much on the ability or willingness of the victim to remain motionless and unflinching, and also on the dexterity and accuracy of the executioner, the method was eventually phased out [in the mid-1600s]. The public spectacle of the decapitation, the headless corpse and gushing blood, became so abhorrent to society that Germany, like many other European countries, adopted the system of hanging its criminals behind prison walls, and the fearsome, blunt-tipped execution swords were honorably retired to museums.

The close relationship that forensic practitioners engender with law enforcement agencies renders them susceptible to cognitive bias through the wider problem of information sharing. Confirmation bias occurs when practitioners use selective external information, consciously or unconsciously garnered from their associates, to assist their conclusions. This is a well-studied phenomenon in eyewitness lineups, in which witnessed who are initially tentative with their identifications become positive after learning that the person they identified is the prime suspect according to the police. Confirmation bias has played a role in numerous forensic scandals, and was recently acknowledged as one of the leading cause of the [fingerprint] misidentification of the 2004 Madrid [train] bomber.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

The New York Police Department is receiving widespread criticism after officers injured an 84-year-old man--who doesn't speak English and didn't understand police orders--for the crime of jaywalking. Kang Wong committed jaywalking at an Upper West Side [Manhattan] intersection in New York City around 5 PM on Sunday, January 19, 2014….He is a resident of the area.

An officer soon approached him and tried to write him a ticket. But Wong, who speaks only broken English, didn't understand what was happening, and continued walking away from the officer. When the officer tried to grab him, he pushed back….Several cops descended on Wong and threw him against a wall. The elderly man came away from the encounter with a bloodied face.

Wong was handcuffed and taken to the hospital and then to the police station….Later that night, Wong was released, but will face charges of jaywalking, resisting arrest, obstructing government administration, and disorderly conduct.

A Vietnamese court has sentenced 30 people to death for trafficking in heroin at the conclusion of a mass trial. State media reported the 21 men and 9 women were convicted [on January 19, 2014] of being part of a ring that smuggled nearly 2 tons of heroin from Laos into Vietnam and then on to China. The trial lasted 20 days and was held in the northern province of Quang Ninh.

Vietnam has tough drug laws and possessing or trafficking 600 grams (21.16 ounces) of heroin can result in a death sentence. There are currently 700 people on death row [in Vietnam]. In 2011 the country switched from firing squads to lethal injection on humanitarian grounds.

Philadelphia police have arrested a man [on January 15, 2014] they believe is the "Swiss cheese pervert," who reportedly sexually propositioned unsuspecting women with the dairy food. The suspect, identified as 41-year-old Christopher Pagano, was arrested at his Norristown, New Jersey home. Investigators suspect Pagano is the man who drove up to women on several occasions and offered them money to put cheese on his genitals and perform a lewd act….

In March 2009, Norristown police charged Pagano…with criminal solicitation to commit prostitution and disorderly conduct after a Norristown woman called police to report a man who said he would pay her $20 to perform a sex act on him with Swiss cheese he removed from his pocket. Under a negotiated guilty plea on November 6, 2009, a Montgomery County prosecutor dropped the criminal solicitation charge, leaving the summary offense of disorderly conduct. [A judge fined Pagano $100.]

A Vatican monsignor on trial for allegedly plotting to smuggle 20 million euros ($26 million) from Switzerland to Italy was arrested on Tuesday, January 21, 2014 in a separate case for allegedly using his Vatican bank accounts to launder money. Financial police in the southern Italian city of Salerno said Monsignor Nunzio Scarano had transferred millions of euros in fictitious donations from offshore companies through his accounts at the Vatican's Institute for Religious Works. Police said millions have been seized and that other arrest warrants were also issued….

The Salerno investigation was already underway when Scarano, dubbed "Monsignor 500" for his purported favored banknotes, was arrested in June in Rome on the smuggling accusations. Prosecutors say he, a financier and a carabinieri officer devised an elaborate plot to transport 20 million euros in a private jet from Switzerland to Italy to avoid paying customs duties. The plot fell apart because the financier reneged at the last minute….Scarano was fired from his job as an accountant in the Vatican's main financial office and his accounts at the Vatican bank were frozen by Vatican authorities after his arrest.

Before you write about a subject, make sure you know it inside and out. If there are questions in your mind, don't skip them or cover them up. Do your best to find the answers. Then, if questions remain, you can always be honest and say so; the reader will forgive you.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Zakieya Latrice Avery resided in a Germantown, Maryland row house with her four children, ages one through eight. Twenty-one-year old Monifa Sanford lived under the same roof with the Avery family. The women had met at a church called Exousia Ministries of Germantown. (It is one of 600 or more non-Catholic churches around the world where exorcism is practiced.) The 28-year-old mother of four and her husband, Martin Luther Harris, Jr., are separated. He lives in Los Angeles. Zakieya had once resided in Gaithersburg, Maryland where she had worked as a pharmacy technician.

On Thursday night, January 16, 2014, one of Zakieya Avery's neighbors in this community north of Washington, D.C. dialed 911 to report on unattended child inside a car outside the Avery house. When officers with the Montgomery County Police Department responded to the 911 call the child was no longer in the vehicle. Officers knocked on Avery's door but no one answered. The officers left the scene but reported the matter to a child protection agency.

The next morning at 9:30, the concerned neighbor called 911 again. This time the caller reported a car with its doors standing open parked outside the Avery residence. A bloody knife lay on the ground near the vehicle.

Upon the arrival of the police, Zakeiya Avery bolted out the back door but didn't get very far. Inside the dwelling, officers discovered the dead bodies of one-year-old Norell Harris and his two-year-old sister Zyana. The toddlers had been each stabbed several times. It appeared they had been attacked while sleeping. In another bedroom, officers found five-year-old Taniya and eight-year-old Martello. These two children had also been stabbed but were alive. The two wounded siblings were rushed to a nearby hospital.

Avery's adult housemate, Monifa Sanford, was also taken to a hospital where she was treated for cuts.

Police officers took Zakieya Avery into custody at the scene. The next day detectives arrested Sanford. Both women have been charged with two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder. Police officers booked the suspects into the Montgomery County Jail where they are being held without bond.

A few days after the murder arrests, Captain Marcus Jones, head of the major crimes unit, told reporters that Zakieya Avery thought her kids were possessed by the Devil which led to a botched exorcism procedure and the deaths. Monifa Sanford was in custody because she had assisted in the deadly ritual. According to the police, both suspects have confessed.

Avery's step-grandmother, Sylvia Wade, told a reporter with the Washington Post that Avery was "humble and meek" and said she loved her children. "I don't know what triggered it. She wasn't herself." Indeed. If anyone was possessed by the Devil, it wasn't these young, helpless victims.

As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don't think it is more dangerous than alcohol. [But Mr. President, pot smoking is a crime in all but a few states. It's also a federal offense.]

President Obama in an interview with a New Yorker editor, January 2014

Next month [February 2014] Montana State University will hold a Latex and Lace Condom Fashion Show in which about 30 students will strut down a T-shaped runway--in front of more than 1,300 MSU students and staff--dressed in outfits comprised of condoms….This will be the fifth year the school holds the condom fashion show event.

[According to Ashlyn Alsberg], a MSU student who works at MSU Health Promotion as a sexual health educator…the show is meant to be an education opportunity for students to learn about sexual health. [Are MSU students stupid? Where were they when their middle school teachers were putting condoms on bananas? Good heavens, how much sex education is enough?]

I'm aware that for a starving writer, a happy man is neither the best nor the most lucrative theme. Most readers do not know that happy people are the worst subjects to write about. They are dull because nothing exciting happens around them. Writers thrive on unhappiness and crime. The well-known slogan that crime doesn't pay is true for general consumption, but not for writers.

Monday, January 20, 2014

From 1961 to 1963, Curtis Reeves, Jr. served as a Navy machinists' mate on a submarine. Following his honorable discharge he drove a truck and worked in a warehouse. In the mid-1970s Reeves became an officer with the Tampa Police Department. He retired, at the rank of captain, in 1993 at the age of 51. In the 1980s officer Reeves helped launch the police department's first SWAT team, a unit he eventually headed.

After retiring from police work, Reeves took a job with the security department at the Florida theme park, Busch Gardens. When he left that position in 2005 he was director of security.

In 2003 Reeves and his wife moved into a sprawling ranch-style home in the community of Spring Lake near Brooksville, Florida. He enjoyed riding his motorcycle and was a member of the Mountainview Estates crime stoppers organization. Reeves and his wife had two grown sons, one of whom was an officer with the Tampa Police Department.

On Monday, January 13, 2014, Curtis Reeves and his wife attended the 1:20 PM showing of "Lone Survivor" at the Grove 16 theater in Wesley Chapel, a suburban community a few miles south of downtown Tampa. Sitting nearby was 43-year-old Chad Oulson and his wife Nicole.

During the showing of the previews before the start of the feature presentation, Reeves became annoyed when he saw Mr. Oulson texting. When the ex-cop asked Oulson to stop that activity, Oulson ignored the request. After Reeves complained further, Oulson explained that he was texting his young daughter.

Reeves, furious over the texting, left his seat to notify theater staff regarding this breach of moviegoing etiquette. When he couldn't find anyone in authority to complain to, Reeves returned to his seat. At that point Mr. Oulson made a derogatory comment regarding Reeves' attempt to report him to theater employees. The two men argued which prompted Mr. Oulson to throw a bag of popcorn at Reeves.

When hit by the popcorn, Reeves pulled out a .380-caliber pistol and shot Chad Oulson in the chest. The victim slumped over in his seat. The bullet that entered Oulson's body first hit his wife in the hand as she tried to hold her husband back. Mr. Oulson tried to speak but couldn't as blood seeped from his mouth. Another theatergoer applied CPR while others called 911.

An off-duty Tampa police officer who happened to be in the theater approached Reeves who sat quietly in his seat with the pistol on his lap. When the officer asked Reeves to hand over the weapon, Reeves refused. Following a brief scuffle, Reeves calmed down and gave up his gun.

Reeves' son, the Tampa police officer (who was off-duty) entered the theater about the time his father shot Mr. Oulson. Shortly thereafter, an ambulance crew rushed Mr. Oulson to a Tampa area hospital where doctors pronounced him dead. His wife Nicole was treated for the bullet wound to her hand.

When deputies with the Pasco County Sheriff's Office arrived at the theater to take the 71-year-old shooter into custody, they advised the suspect of his Miranda rights. Reeves told the officers that the man he had shot had struck him with an unknown object. In fear of being assaulted, he pulled and fired his gun.

Charged with second-degree murder, Reeves made his first court appearance on Tuesday, the day after the shooting. His attorney, Richard Escobar, asked the judge not to set bond due to the fact his client, with all of his ties to the community, was not a flight risk. "The alleged victim attacked him," the defense attorney said.

The judge, noting that being struck by an unknown object did not call for the use of a handgun, denied bail. During the arraignment, a Pasco County prosecutor said that a woman named Jamira Dixon had come forward with information regarding her recent encounter with Mr. Reeves. According to Dixon, Reeves had become enraged three weeks earlier when he saw her texting in the same theater. Dixon said he glared at her throughout the movie, and followed her out of the room when she got up to use the restroom.

If convicted as charged, Curtis Reeves could be sentenced to life in prison. In his case, a ten-year sentence would probably have the same result.

At times, judges abandon their neutrality and step into the adversarial void, acting like prosecutors, forcing defendants either to take a deal or wait in jail for a trial date. That, or they deny a defendant his rights altogether….Many defendants plead guilty without a lawyer present. In some cases, they had been in jail for months without counsel. In others, they had no idea what they were pleading guilty to or they accepted sentences higher than the legal maximum.

A Las Vegas police captain who helped a rock star pull off an elaborate wedding proposal by arranging a flight on a department helicopter has retired rather than face demotion, and the pilot's flying wings have been clipped….

O'Leary, a 25-year veteran who oversaw the Financial Crimes Bureau, instead retired on December 20. Officer Ray Horsley who piloted the helicopter, is being transferred out of the Air Support Detail as of January 11 [2014] and will no longer be allowed to fly for the department….

It might be thought that murder presented as fictional entertainment on cinema and television screens is frequently implausible. Yet in its bizarre, extraordinary and frequently farcical consequences it is invariably bettered by the real thing. Truth really is stranger than fiction….The details of murders…frequently fall into that category where the conclusion is, "You couldn't make that up."…

Murder seems to attract weird behavior beyond the basic elements of one person killing another. Tremaryne Durham, for instance, a murder suspect in custody in the United States, became fed up with the monotonous institutional food he was served in prison and arranged a plea bargain whereby he would admit guilt in return for a chicken dinner.

After a [police-involved] shooting, [The Santa Barbara Police Department] policy states that the officer must request a supervisor, additional units and medical personnel, handcuff the suspect [presuming he is not dead], preserve the scene and identify witnesses. Officers cannot discuss the shooting with one another or write about the incident. Instead, the supervisor asks the officer for a description of the outstanding suspects, where the evidence is and what direction shots were fired. Among other duties, the supervisor is there to secure the crime scene and determine whether other suspects are at large and witnesses are being interviewed. He or she is not authorized to inquire about the involved officer's tactics and state of mind, according to the [police] manual. The police chief is the only one authorized to release the officer's identify.

To the question of who holds police accountable, in Santa Barbara, California, an officer-involved investigation is done internally….

An administrative investigation follows the [internal] investigation to ensure all department policies were met and to evaluate the officer's civil liability and examine training procedures. At this point, the investigation becomes a human resources issue with information gathered not permissible in court. The administrative investigation is considered a "confidential peace officer personnel file," according to the manual….

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Eleven people were inside a mobile home near Chillicothe, Ohio when, at 10:30 PM on December 11, 2013, a dozen or so members of a local drug task force unit rolled up to the dwelling with a no-knock warrant to search for guns and drugs. One of the occupants of the trailer house was a teenage girl.

Just before breaking into the home, one of the heavily armed U.S. 23 Task Force officers tossed a flashbang grenade through a window. At the moment the device detonated officers forced their way into the house.

Following the initial chaos created by the SWAT-like raid, officers found Krystal Marie Barrows slumped on the living room couch. The 35-year-old mother of three had been shot in the head. She died shortly after being flown by helicopter to the Wexner Medical Center in Columblus.

The raiding police officers arrested two women and four men for illegally possessing pistols, assault rifles, and heroin. The task force cops also recovered stolen goods and a significant amount of cash. During the raid, none of the mobile home occupants pulled a gun or fired a shot. This meant that Krystal Barrows had been shot by one of the task force officers.

According to the results of a preliminary police inquiry into Barrows' death, she had been shot by Ross County sergeant Brett McKnight. The eleven-year veteran of the Ross County Sheriff's Office had accidentally discharged his sidearm outside the trailer when the flashbang grenade went off. The bullet pierced the trailer home's exterior wall and hit Barrows in the head.

Other than a misdemeanor drunk and disorderly conviction, Krystal Barrows did not have a criminal record. Her sons were aged 19, 14, and 9. Detectives with the Ohio Bureau of Investigation are looking into the case to determine if Sergeant McKnight had fired his gun recklessly. If that turns out to be the case, the officer could be charged with negligent homicide.

Whether officer McKnight was reckless or not, the law enforcement agencies involved in the fatal drug raid can expect to be defendants in a wrongful death suit. Taxpayers will end up paying the bill for this police involved shooting.

Kevin Abar, assistant special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in New Mexico, says drug distributors are selling methamphetamine tinted blue in the Four Corners region. That mirrors AKMC's hit drama "Breaking Bad," which depicted an Albuquerque-based meth operation that cooked up the drug with a blue hue. Abar says tinting meth blue is a way for distributors to advertise and brand their product. But he says the blue meth being sold makes people sick. He says it has been cut with chemicals to make it blue and is not the "pure" product portrayed in "Breaking Bad."

In October 1947, ship's steward James Camb raped and murdered actress Gay Gibson aboard the Durban Castle out of South Africa. Although Camb disposed of his luckless victim out of one of the liner's portholes and the body was never found, fresh scratches on the suspect's arms and back indicated his involvement in a fierce struggle. Blood-flecked saliva on the pillow cover of Miss Gibson's bed was consistent with manual strangulation, and in situations of abject fear such as that Gay Gibson must have felt at the hands of her attacker, it is common for the bladder to empty--which accounted for the extensive urine staining on the bed. In March 1948, after the ship docked in Southampton, England, Camb was tried, convicted and sentenced to death.

It used to be like a fever with me, a compulsion, a madness: to go into a bookstore, head straight for the brand-new books, flip right to the back of the jacket and see if the author was young or old, my age or even--rats!--younger. Envy is a vocational hazard for most writers. It festers in one's mind, distracting one from one's own work, at its most virulent even capable of rousing the sufferer from sleep to brood over another's triumph.

Envy is the green-eyed beast. It is a sickness; it is a hunger.... It takes what was most beloved--reading books, writing them--and sours it, a quick drop of vinegar into the glass of sweet milk. Even friendships aren't exempt.

Saturday, January 18, 2014

The gang-rape of a Danish woman in one of New Delhi's most popular tourist districts is prompting concern for the safety of foreign travelers and raising questions over how much progress has been made in India after a year in which considerable attention has been focused on the prevalence of rape.

Indian police said that a 51-year-old Danish tourist was gang-raped [on January 14, 2014] in the popular paharganj district after asking a group of men for directions to her hotel. Police have arrested two people in connection with the rape….

The incident comes a year after the rape and death of a 23-year-old student in a bus in New Delhi that sparked mass protests across the country and a national dialogue on the position of women in society and the pervasiveness of rape.

The U.S. Justice Department will significantly expand its definition of racial profiling to prohibit federal agents from considering religion, national origin, gender and sexual orientation in their investigations….The move addresses a decade of criticism from civil rights groups that say federal authorities have in particular singled out Muslims in counterterrorism investigations and Latinos for immigration investigations.

The Bush administration banned profiling in 2003, but with two caveats: It did not apply to national security cases, and it covered only race, not religion, ancestry or other factors.

Matt Apuzzo, "U.S. to Expand Rules Limiting Use of Profiling by Federal Agents," The New York Times, January 15, 2014

Dennis McGuire, 53, whose arguments that the new lethal injection protocol could cause terror and agony [like that of his victim] were rejected by a federal judge, was pronounced dead at 10:53 AM on January 14, 2014. Ohio adopted the new protocol--a combination of the sedative midozolam and the painkiller hydropmorphone--after the manufacturer of the old drug, pentobarbital, stopped selling it for lethal injections.

McGuire was convicted of raping, sodomizing and slashing the throat of an acquaintance Joy Stewart, who was eight months pregnant at the time of her murder in 1989….

Dope [heroin] can make you bad looking, especially if you're using a lot: you retain water, so your face grows puffy and aged, you develop blemishes, your skin looks green. After quitting, you look worse for months before your former looks return.

Friday, January 17, 2014

When you ride around all day long and you're dealing with shootings, you're dealing with robberies, you're dealing with all this violent crime that's constantly going on, that's going to influence how you respond in certain situations. And we have to take that into account in our training. We teach our officers to try to interact with people and realize that not everybody in a given neighborhood is a thug or a criminal, they're not all out to hurt you. These are important things that I think we've got to face head on.

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey in a 2013 report on police use of force

Though [writer Roger Rosenblatt] studied at Harvard, and even taught there, his most important education came from popular fiction. Above all, detective fiction, starting with Sherlock Holmes.

"I wanted to be Holmes, himself," he writes early in [his new book, The Boy Detective]. "The detective I concocted for myself was not exactly like him. What I imagined was a composite made up of Holmes's power of observation, Hercule Poirot's powers of deduction, Sam Spade's straight talk, Miss Marple's stick-to-itiveness, and Philip Marlowe's courage and sense of honor--he who traveled the 'mean streets,' like mine, and was 'neither tarnished nor afraid.' The fact that, as far as I could tell, I lacked every single one of these qualities, and saw no prospect of every achieving them, presented no discouragement."

From Pete Hamill's review of Rosenblatt's book The Boy Detective in The New York Times Book Review, November 17, 2013

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Three armed sheriff deputies were called to safely escort actor Sean Penn out of a West Hollywood restaurant and into his car. The star was dining at Craig's when deputies got a call around 11:08 PM Sunday [January 5, 2014] from restaurant staff that paparazzi were blocking the entrance to the restaurant and preventing patrons from leaving. That's when deputies arrived to clear a path. [Penn walked ten steps to his car without incident. Police officers shouldn't act as private bodyguards or restaurant security.]

At writers' conferences and book signings, authors are almost always asked, "Where do you get your ideas?" This fascinates fledgling writers, especially those who feel they haven't done enough with their lives that's the least bit interesting.

Yet, ideas abound. From where you are sitting at this very moment, you can generate more ideas than you will ever use. Scan a newspaper or magazine. Do any of the stories pique your interest? There may be another slant the writer neglected to explore or you may read a local story that is perfect for a national market. And don't forget your early life as a rich source of ideas--remember the high points and low points, the traumas and joys. [My advice: if you want to get published, forget your early life. The coming of age book is an overworked genre.]

A California lawmaker proposed legislation [on January 13, 2014] to make background checks and gun registration requirements for anyone who builds plastic firearms on a 3-D printer at home….It's part of a growing effort across the country to pre-empt the spread of these undetectable guns. State Senator Kevin de Leon said he is trying to address a twin threat from what he called "ghost guns"--plastic guns that can evade metal detectors and unregistered weapons that can fall into the hands of people who are legally prohibited from owning firearms under state law. "Currently, no one knows they exist until after a crime has been committed," said de Leon.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

The acid test of murder is intention and what the law calls mens rea or guilty mind. Guilty intention is described as malice aforethought and it is this which distinguishes it from manslaughter. The classic definition of murder based on malice aforethought goes back to English Common Law and takes account of the age and mental status of the offender. This was set out by Lord Chief Justice Edward Coke (1552-1634) when he referred to "a man of sound memory and at the age of discretion." In practical terms, this meant an individual who was not insane and aged at least ten years.

A lawmaker in Wyoming says the state ought to take action now to avoid a constitutional crisis if lethal injection for convicts is ever outlawed and pass a bill to allow for the return of firing squads…. Senator Bruce Burns said that Wyoming state law only allows for a gas chamber to be used in place of a lethal injection….But that causes a dilemma in his mind. "The state of Wyoming doesn't have a gas chamber…so the procedure and expense to build one would be impractical. I consider the gas chamber to be cruel and unusual, so I want the firing squad because they also have it in Utah."

Are writers more concerned with others' opinions of them, more given to depression, and more reluctant to share their work, especially work they consider risky, than other creative types? In my experience, yes, yes, and yes. While the painters and other visual artists I know are surely sensitive people, they also seem enviably oblivious to what others think of their work. Musicians and actors, too, have hefty egos and tend to be more obsessed with what they do than what others think about what they do….Regardless of talent, it's almost impossible to get new writers to stand up and read from their work. [Maybe it's because they think this kind of exercise is self-important and boring to others.]

Yes, writers' temperaments are unique. I have watched the most talented writers compare themselves to their favorite authors--to dead authors, especially--and grow encyclopedia-sized [writer's] blocks because they believe they'll never be as good. [They are probably right.]

Talent seems to be inverse to confidence. Some of the most talented writers I know are reluctant to send out their work, so convinced are they that no will will ever publish it.

A jury has acquitted two former Fullerton, California police officers on trial in the beating death [July 5, 2011] of Kelly Thomas, a mentally ill and homeless man…."I'm just horrified. They got away with murdering my son," Cathy Thomas, the victim's mother, told reporters….The victim's father, Ron Thomas, said that everyone now needs to be afraid. "This is carte blanche to police officers to do whatever they want."…Surveillance camera footage shows Thomas being beaten, clubbed and stunned with a Taser by police. The video sparked a nationwide outcry.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Something's amiss when a girl in kindergarten, all of forty pounds, is led away in handcuffs by police. That's what happened in the spring of 2005 in St. Petersburg, Florida. Equally strange, the whole episode was taped and shown on national television. There's the little girl, hair neatly braided, going from desk to desk, throwing books and pencils on the floor, tearing papers off the bulletin board, and methodically destroying her classroom. The assistant principal circles her, arms outstretched as if in a linebacker drill, but assiduously avoiding contact. (Why not just hold on to her? You wonder, watching…Is the child a hemophiliac?) The little girl is eventually steered into the principal's office, where she continues to wreak havoc on the orderly piles of paper and announcements tacked to the wall. Eventually the police arrive and handcuff the five-year-old. She screams. The tape ends.

For as long as there have been schools, teachers have had to deal with unreasonable five-year-olds. Calling the cops isn't the time-tested solution. Let's rewind the tape and handle this sensibly. Problem: temper tantrum in kindergarten classroom. Solution: Ask the girl to stop. When she refuses, hold her by the arm, preventing more destruction. If necessary, take her to another room until she calms down. Doing what's right here isn't rocket science.

But teachers in America can't do this. Taking hold of a child's arm is verboten--touching is taboo, except to prevent harm to others. So a five-year-old ends up in handcuffs.

The common expectation is that [film] adaptations should be "faithful" to their source texts. But it's not all clear why we should burden films with this obligation.

When my novel Notes on a Scandal was turned into a movie some years ago, I was repeatedly asked if I minded that the filmmakers had "taken liberties" with the book. I did not mind. The liberties had been bought and paid for. And I had made my peace with the idea that my book was being adapted, not imitated or illustrated.

Monday, January 13, 2014

Most people, if pressed, would acknowledge that they could use an ethical tuneup. Maybe last year they fudged some numbers at work or dented a car and failed to leave a note….The problem, research shows, is that how we think we're going to act when faced with a moral decision and how we really do act are often vastly different.

Here's just one of many examples from an experiment at Northeastern University: Subjects were told they should flip a coin to see who should do certain tasks. One task is long and laborious; the other is short and fun. The participant flips the coin in private (though secretly watched by video cameras), said David DeSteno, a professor of psychology at Northeastern who conducted the experiment. Only 10 percent of them did it honestly. The others didn't flip at all, or kept flipping until the coin came up the way they wanted.

Alina Tugend, "In Life and Business, Learning to be Ethical," The New York Times, January 10, 2014

[The novelist] E. M. Forster introduced the term flat character to refer to characters who have no hidden complexity. In this sense, they have no depth (hence the word "flat"). Frequently found in comedy, satire, and melodrama, flat characters are limited to a narrow range of predictable behaviors….

Forster's counter term to flat characters was round characters. Round characters have varying degrees of depth and complexity and therefore, in Forster's words, they "cannot be summed up in a single phrase."

A governor broke with tradition [on January 8, 2014] and devoted his entire state of the state address to drug addiction. Peter Shumlin, the governor of Vermont, urged residents to open their eyes to the growing problem in their front yards, rather than leaving it only to law enforcement, medical personnel and addiction treatment providers. Shumlin argued the facts speak for themselves.

In Vermont, since 2000, there has been a 770 per cent increase in treatment for all opiates. He stated, "What started out as an OxyContin and prescription drug addiction problem in this state has now grown into a full-blown heroin crisis. And last year we had nearly double the number of deaths in Vermont from heroin overdose as the previous year."

In turns out Vermont is not the only state facing this crisis. According to the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, the number of deaths involving heroin surged 45 percent between 1999 and 2010.

Schoolchildren in Oklahoma could not be punished for chewing their breakfast pastries into the shape of a gun under a bill introduced [in January 2014] by a Republican legislator. Representative Sally Kern said that her measure dubbed the Common Sense Zero Tolerant Act was in response to school districts having policies that are too struck or inflexible. Kern cited a recent Maryland case that gained national media attention where a boy was suspended after his teacher accused him of chewing his Pot Tart into the shape of a gun….

Under Kern's bill, students couldn't be punished for possessing small toy weapons or using writing utensils, fingers, or their hands to simulate a weapon. Students also couldn't be punished for drawing pictures of weapons or wearing clothes that "support or advance Second Amendment rights or organizations."

Sunday, January 12, 2014

While most collectors acquire everyday objects such as coins, stamps, and books, a few collectors specialize in things that are odd and to most people disgusting. There is even a reality television series devoted to the acquisition of bizarre objects. The show is called "Oddities" and is presented on the Discovery Channel. Viewers follow the operation of a retail shop in Manhattan, New York called Obscura Antiques and Oddities. Items bought and sold on the show have included a mummified cat, various animal teeth, a dead four-legged chicken, and a shrunken head.

The "Oddities" television series has helped establish a market for unusual items and "conversation pieces" most of us would consider too disgusting to possess. It has also created an opportunity for thieves who specialize in these collectibles.

In early October 2013, a thief in Indianapolis, Indiana walked off with sixty jars of brain and other tissue from dead mental patients. The specimens were kept, among thousands of other such containers, in warehouse space on the campus of the Indiana Medical History Museum. The brains and other specimens had come from clinical autopsies performed at the Central Indiana Hospital for the Insane, an institution that opened its doors in 1848 and closed in 1994. According to the director of the museum, the stolen jars were valued at $4,800. (Is there a bluebook for the pickled brains of dead mental patients?)

In early December 2013, the director of the Indiana Medical History Museum received a call from a collector in California who said he had purchased, through an eBay auction site, six jars of brain matter. He had paid $600 for the specimens. According to the oddities buyer, he became suspicious when the jars he acquired appeared similar to the ones pictured on the museum's website.

The tip from the California collector led to the identification of David Charles as the seller of the stolen brains.

On December 16, 2013, an undercover Indianapolis police officer posing as an oddities collector interested in jarred brains met Mr. Charles in the parking lot of a Dairy Queen. When the 21-year-old suspected thief offered to sell the officer the stolen property, the cop took him into custody.

A Marion County prosecutor has charged David Charles with felony theft. He has also been accused of possessing marijuana and drug paraphernalia. (If the suspect broke into the museum to steal the specimens he could also be charged with burglary.)

The execution of Gary Gilmore, carried out in 1977, marked the resurrection of the modern death penalty. The event was big news and was commemorated by a book by Norman Mailer, The Executioner's Song, later made into a movie. The title is deceptive. Like others who have explored the death penalty, Mailer tells much about the condemned man but very little about the executioners. Indeed, if we examine Mailer's account more closely, the executioner's story is not only unsung, it is also distorted.

Gilmore's execution was quite atypical, even if his crime was not. He was sentenced to death for killing two men in cold blood, for no apparent reason. Viewed from the outside, his own death had a similar ring of nihilism. Gilmore, unrepentant and unafraid, refused to appeal his conviction--under a then untested capital statue. There is no doubt he could have contested his case for years, as many condemned prisoners have done since his death. But Gilmore, who had already served some twenty-two years of his young life behind bars, would have none of that. To him, prison was death; life in prison was a kind of living death in its own right. Death by firing squad gave him a chance to offer blood atonement for his awful crimes (a notion that resonated with his dark Mormon obsessions), as well as a kind of immortality as the man who put the executioner back to work.

Twenty years ago, Tonya Harding became a household name after she was implicated in the "whack heard around the world" on her figure skating USA teammate, Nancy Kerrigan. To this day, there may not be a bigger scandal in modern sports history.

Now, two decades later, the scandal is the focus of ESPN's latest documentary in the network's "30 for 30" series. "The Price of Gold" opens with Nancy Kerrigan shrieking through tears, "Why me? Why?" after a man (who we all now know was a friend of Harding's ex-husband) kidnapped her after a practice prior to the January 6, 1994 U.S. Figure Skating Championships….

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Well-trained forensic pathologists were scarce until a few medical schools began offering formal training in the 1930s. Physicians had testified in trials for decades, but most had seen only a few violent deaths in their careers and did not understand the science of stab angles, poisons, and gunpowder marks.

Throughout the 20th century, forensic medical training struggled to catch up with other specializations, perhaps because of its idiosyncrasies. First of all, its patients are dead, so instead of studying laboratory slides and live patients, budding forensic pathologists needed to work on bullet-riddlled bodies. As a result, they worked in morgues, far from a hospital, a source of the medical profession's power. Even recently, forensic pathologists have complained that textbooks and training cover the medicine--injury patterns and pathologic changes--but not the practical stuff like how to check the lips of an overdose for medication dye or the proper way to mark and preserve a bullet fragment.

Friday, January 10, 2014

There is an old joke…about a shipwrecked sailor. Adrift for days, he is washed ashore on an uncharted island. He looks about apprehensively. Presently his gaze falls on a gallows, whereupon he is visibly relieved. "At last," he sighs, "I've reached civilization!" The point of the joke is that only a comparatively settled, and hence civilized, society has the need for a permanent gallows and possesses the means, including skilled labor, to construct one. There is truth in that observation, though the earliest form of death penalty involved stoning, which did not require a gallows or any other man-made instrument of execution.

Police in Oklahoma say that a 33-year-old man allegedly killed his stepfather after a fight last month [December 2013] by yanking the older man's underwear up his back and over his head so that the waistband was around his neck. Brad Davis, of McLoud, was arrested [on January 7, 2014] and booked into the Pottawatomie County Jail on a first-degree murder complaint….

An argument that escalated into a fight that broke out on the evening of December 21, 2013 between Davis and Denver St. Clair. St. Clair had made disparaging comments about the younger man's mother related to the couple's pending divorce…. Davis tackled St. Clair in the kitchen then punched him in the face several times before he could make it back to his feet….Davis told police that he pulled St. Clair's underwear up over St. Clair's head, and later noticed that St. Clair was unconscious and called the police….When detectives arrived, Davis was standing over St. Clair smoking a cigarette.

The state's medical examiner said that St. Clair's cause of death was either blunt force trauma to the head or asphyxia. [Both men had been drinking that night. Davis is a former Marine.]

Within weeks, the United Kingdom Parliament is set to consider a bill criminalizing "emotional blackmail" and related forms of emotional abuse. The bill would forbid persons to "make contact with a victim in an aggressive way" or to "intend to control or coerce" a partner, with penalties of up to 14 years in prison.

"Control" and "coercion" are to be interpreted widely, covering such actions as using the family finances to manipulate one's partner or deploying psychological tactics to keep a partner fearful and in line. Proponents of this legislation, who span the three major parties, claim that it will give emotional abuse victims more confidence in coming forward regarding their circumstances, and that it will help keep emotional abuse victims safe.

We have plenty of reason to want confidence and safety for victims of emotional abuse. But can legislation of this kind deliver it, in Britain or anywhere else? And if so, at what cost? Anti-emotional abuse legislation is at best redundant, and at worst fraught with unintended consequences.

As a child, my dream was to be an archaeologist when I grew up, and in a way, my fascination with forensics makes total sense. It's all about taking a shard or a splinter or bit of bone and reconstructing how someone died and lived, and who they were. An archaeological site is really one big crime scene.

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Heather Elvis, a 20-year-old employee of a bar and restaurant in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, lived with a female roommate at the River Oaks Apartments in the city. Her parents, Terry and Debbie Elvis, lived nearby. At three in the morning of Wednesday, December 18, 2013, Heather called her roommate from her cellphone about 45 minutes after being dropped off at River Oaks by her date. She called to report how the evening with the young man had worked out.

On December 19, 2013, Heather's abandoned 2001 Dodge Intrepid was found parked at the Peachtree Landing along the Waccamaw River in the town of Socastee just outside of Myrtle Beach. The dark green vehicle had not been involved in an accident. Parked about nine miles from the River Oak Apartments, the car did not contain Heather's purse or her cellphone.

On Friday, December 20, after Heather failed to show up for her scheduled shift at the Tilted Kilt Pub and Eatery, her parents, Terry and Debbi Elvis, reported their 5-foot-1 inch, 118-pound daughter missing.

The next day, under the supervision of the Horry County Police Department, 300 people spent ten hours combing the woods and ponds in the vicinity of the abandoned car.

On January 3, 2014 another search party made up of law enforcement officers and volunteers, aided by several K-9 units and searchers riding horses and ATVs, continued the hunt for the missing young woman.

Lieutenant Robert Kegler with the Horry County Police Department, on January 6, told a Fox News reporter that detectives had questioned several people in connection with the disappearance. While the young man who had dropped Heather off at her apartment after the date in the early morning hours of December 18 was not a suspect, some of the uncooperative men interviewed by detectives were being scrutinized.

At 8 PM on Monday, January 6, 2014, television crime host Nancy Grace devoted a segment of her show to the Heather Elvis missing persons case. A $25,000 reward was posted for information leading to the discovery of the missing young woman.

At seven o'clock on the morning of Friday, February 21, 2014, officers with the Horry County Police Department, South Carolina State Police, and U.S. Marshal's Office, executed a search warrant at a house in Myrtle Beach occupied by 37-year-old Sidney Moorer and his 41-year-old wife Tammy. Officers spent eleven hours at the dwelling. Cadaver dogs searched the property without result. Two pickup trucks were taken away from the house and officers were seen placing several boxes into a white police van.

A prosecutor, following the search of the Moorer house, charged Sidney and Tammy with indecent exposure and obstruction of justice. (It has been reported that Tammy, angry at Heather because she and Sidney had been involved in a sexual relationship, sent her nude pictures of herself and Sidney. In January 2014, Tammy told a reporter that Sidney had sex with Heather Elvis in his car "a total of three times." According to Tammy, Sidney ended the relationship when he realized that "something wasn't right about her.")

On February 24, 2014, a Horry County prosecutor charged the couple with Heather Elvis' kidnapping and murder. They are being held without bail. Elvis' body has not been found,

Tens of thousands of houses have been used as meth labs the last decade and a cottage industry is developing around cleaning them up. Many Americans are more aware of the production of the highly addictive drug thanks to AMC's hit show "Breaking Bad" which featured a high school chemistry teacher who turned into a meth cooker and dealer. In real life, cleanup contractors are the ones who deal with a property when a batch explodes or police raid an operation and shut it down.

However, there is little oversight of the growing industry in most states, opening the door for potential malfeasance…

To make a meth home safe, a certified contractor must remove and replace all contaminated materials, from walls to carpet to air conditioning vents. Next, a certified "industrial hygienist" tests the home to gauge whether it can be lived in or needs more cleaning.

Hygienists and contractors find homes in different states of repair. Homes with no fires or explosions are easier to clean, but there is often a pungent odor, contaminated cooktops, carpets and walls, leaky roofs and dirty furniture.

Literary prizes sometimes seem to function like parents whose approval we crave as well as spurn. The complaints are as common as they are contradictory: Prizes are awarded to tepid, undemanding best sellers everyone reads; prizes are awarded to obscure, abstruse books no one reads. They are awarded to the right authors, but for the wrong work (Hemingway for "The Old Man and the Sea," Faulkner for "A Fable"). They are awarded to the wrong authors for the wrong work (Margaret Mitchell for "Gone With the Wind"). They are withheld from the right authors for the right work (Gravity's Rainbow," by Thomas Pynchon, won jury approval for the Pulitzer Price in 1974 but was overruled by a board that deemed the novel "turgid," and "obscene"). Sometimes the grousing has the whiff of sour grapes. "Prize X has never been awarded to Philip Roth." Prize Y has never been awarded to me."

Jennifer Szalai, "Bookends," The New York Times Book Review, November 24, 2013

More than 100 former New York City workers [72 of them ex-cops] were charged on January 7, 2014 with faking psychological problems for insurance benefits. Prosecutors say the total amount bilked from Social Security disability insurance could reach $400 million, dating back to 1988….

More than half of these cases came from those claiming the events of 9/11 left them unfit to work. Prosecutors say the ringleaders coached them on how to act when examined by doctors, like how to fail memory tests and how to apply for benefits.

The operation was [headed] by ex-cops Joseph Esposito and John Minerva, as well as former FBI Agent Raymond Lavalee and Thomas Hale, a prison consultant.

The GE Mound Case

SWAT Madness and the Militarization of the American Police: A National Dilemma

"[A] powerful work . . . well researched . . . Recommended." Choice

LITERARY QUOTATIONS: GENRE

LITERARY QUOTATIONS: GENRE is a compilation of informative and entertaining quotes by writers, editors, critics, journalists, and literary agents on the subject of literary genre. The quotes also touch on the subjects of craft, creativity, publishing, and the writing life.

Contributors

A graduate of Westminster College (Pennsylvania) and Vanderbilt University Law School, I am the author of twelve non-fiction books on crime, criminal investigation, forensic science, policing, and writing. I have been nominated twice for the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Allen Poe Award in the Best Fact Crime Category. As a former FBI agent, criminal investigator, author, and professor of criminal justice at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, I have been interviewed numerous times on television and radio and for the print media.
For more information about me, please visit my web site at http://jimfisher.edinboro.edu.